Diane Macedo of Fox News worked on Sofia's story for more than a month, studying documents, interviewing more than a dozen people, and fact-checking before publishing her news story on Monday and airing our interview. Fox News: ▸ video ▸ story On Monday, she also published a detailed article on Sofia that was picked up by a dozen or so media outlets around the world during the week. ▸ Fox News Story on Sofia's Abduction to Syria When Sofia returns safely home, she will pay her first visit to Diane at the Fox News headquarters in New York City. ▸ US Leaves Its Youngest Citizen Behind Syria The following is a short weekend "bedtime story" for my daughter while she still remains abducted in Syria. Twitter updates on Sofia @FuatKircaali One day, during his travels, Daddy found a "little green Swiss frog" on his bed as he arrived in his hotel room. Daddy took the little g... (more)

In 2014 Big Data Investments Will Account for Nearly $30 Billion - Eventually Accounting for $76 Billion by 2020 End

DALLAS, Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Amid the proliferation of real time data from sources such as mobile devices, web, social media, sensors, log files and transactional applications, Big Data has found a host of vertical market applications, ranging from fraud detection to R&D.; Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140821/138541 "Big Data Market: 2014 – 2020 – Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals & Forecasts" Key Findings: In 2014 Big Data vendors will pocket nearly $30 Billion from hardware, software and professional services revenues Big Data investments are further expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 17% over the next 6 years, eventually accounting for $76 Billion by the end of 2020 The market is ripe for acquisitions of pure-play Big Data startups, as competition heats up between IT incumbents Nearly every large scale IT ven... (more)

The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing

Cloud Expo Early Bird Savings A robust ecosystem of solutions providers is emerging around cloud computing. Here, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal expands its list of most active players in the fast-emerging Cloud Ecosystem, from the 'mere' 100 we identified back in January of this year, to half as many again - testimony, if any further were needed, to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites cited. As ever we encourage software engineers, developers, IT operations managers, and new/growing companies in every case to "suck it and see" by downloading or otherwise sampling the offering in question for themselves. (Omissions to this Top 150 list sh... (more)

What's the Best Definition of SOA?

It seems that I am not as flexible as I believed I could be on my thinking regarding SOA. I attempted to categorize various SOA engagements in my SOA World Magazine article entitled “A Classification Scheme for Defining SOA”. I believed that I could hide my dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity surrounding SOA by lumping SODA/application development into its own subcategory. I was wrong! When it comes down to it, there's still just too much ambiguity surrounding the term service. So, you might ask, “What is the big deal if we call everything running on a computer a service?” The answer is that not all services are created equally and there's no way to determine the type or extent of services when a single term is used as a catch-all. For me, SOA is defined precisely as follows: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an archetype—an architectural pattern —that focus... (more)

OpenNebula 2012: A Year of Innovation in Open Source Cloud Computing

Time flies, and we are approaching the end of another successful year at OpenNebula!. We've had a lot to celebrate around here during 2012, including our fifth anniversary. We took that opportunity to look back at how the project has grown in the last five years. We are extremely happy with the organic growth of the project. It's five years old, it's parked in some of the biggest organizations out there, and that all happened without any investment in marketing, just offering the most innovative and flexible open-source solution for data center virtualization and enterprise cloud management. An active and engaged community, along with our focus on solving real user needs in innovative ways and the involvement of the users in a fully vendor-agnostic project, constitute, in our view, the OpenNebula's recipe to success. As 2012 draws to and end, we'd like to review wh... (more)

Mobile Health News Weekly – Week of March 10, 2013

The Mobile Health News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to mobile health that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends. Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly Also read Field Mobility News Weekly Also read Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 Also read M2M News Weekly Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly Also read Mobility News Weekly Also read SMAC News Weekly The market for mobile health services has now entered the commercialization phase, according to a report by Research2guidance which predicts the market will reach $26 billion by 2017. Read Original Content AT&T;, a worldwide communications holding company, plans to launch its Mobile Health Solution that will automatically connect people in critical condition for emergency medical assistance. Re... (more)

CS3 Technology Service Pillar "Know When You Are In Over Your Head" Winner Announced

Tulsa, OK, May 22, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Amanda Hillis, Product Manager with Kline Oilfield, is the recipient of the “Know when you are in over your head” Service Pillar monthly recognition hosted by CS3 Technology. CS3 Technology’s Shawn Slavin and Beth Welch nominated Amanda for the recognition. In their nomination, they stated, “Amanda has broad responsibility for data integrity, business process improvement and various operational responsibilities related to Sage ERP 100. The complexities of Kline’s business operations, growth and evolving systems require that Amanda have extensive product knowledge. She understands the value of asking the right questions early on to ensure a small issue does not balloon into something larger. She asks the right questions, at the right time.” “I was surprised to receive this honor,” said Amanda, who has been with Kline Tools since 200... (more)

Microblogging, 'Socialpedia' And Knowledge Explorer Expand Collaboration Capabilities in NewsGator Social Sites 3.0

DENVER, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- NewsGator today announced the general availability of the newest version of its enterprise social computing platform, Social Sites 3.0, with new features for tracking colleagues' status, streamlining cross-community knowledge-sharing, and discovering in-house subject matter experts. Built into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, these features help NewsGator Social Sites transform content, activity, and connections into valuable social knowledge for business. The new microblogging feature in Social Sites 3.0 lets users post short, quick Twitter-style status updates to their colleagues. These updates serve as a way to report urgent developments, train colleagues on the fly, identify helpful experts, chronicle off-site conferences, mentor/get mentored, float new ideas, build morale and otherwise harness the value of "weak t... (more)

Flirtomatic Social Mobile Service Launches in U.S.

Flirtomatic, Inc. (www.flirtomatic.com), one of the most popular social mobile services used by young adults, today announced an agreement with MetroPCS Wireless, Inc., a subsidiary of MetroPCS Communications, Inc., the nation's leading provider of unlimited, flat-rate, no signed contract wireless communications service, under which Flirtomatic has been selected as a preferred mobile social networking service. The service is accessible via the MetroPCS Mobile Web Portal. With over 1.5 million registered users, Flirtomatic is a market leader with its service available in the U.K., Germany and Australia. Flirtomatic’s free service will now also be available to all MetroPCS customers to meet, flirt, and have fun online. Flirtomatic is free to use and customers use it by purchasing FlirtPoints and spending them by promoting themselves, finding out who has rated them, a... (more)

Picapp Integrates in Google Knol to Enable Access to Celeb, Sports, News, Creative Images

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/25/10 -- Google Knol publishers searching for photos of newly elected senator Brown, Jennifer Aniston at the Golden Globe Awards, or Peyton Manning, or looking for photos of the Golden Gate Bridge, an image of a human brain or a wildflower, can now use Picapp to add relevant images to their knols. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has integrated Picapp's Partner API into the Knol editor, along with other embeddable object features. The Picapp integration will enable Knol publishers to access fresh, premium and free images. Knol has more than 100,000 articles, and is considered one of the most innovative and fastest growing knowledge base platforms. Picapp hopes to continue working with Google to integrate with additional products. Unlike other content syndication products that include intrusive advertising, the Pi... (more)

Calipari, Boeheim, Huggins, Dunphy Offer March Madness Audio Insights

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/11/10 -- Lexy, a new exclusive technology platform designed to offer personalized, on-demand, audio entertainment for the mobile market, will introduce its "Starting 5" Lexycasts from four leading college coaches and Lexy basketball experts during this year's post-season NCAA tournament, providing immediate, behind-the-scenes insight for basketball fans everywhere. Coaches joining the Lexy "Starting 5" team are head coaches: John Calipari, University of Kentucky; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse University; Bob Huggins, West Virginia University; and Fran Dunphy, Temple University. The fifth member of the "Starting 5" will be a rotating lineup of NCAA basketball 'Lexycasters' who will offer their unique opinions and information during the post-season. Lexycasts are authentic, interactive, timely audio posts, usually one to three minutes t... (more)